Bombed Page 3

  He glanced at the piles of paper and envelopes, and visibly cringed. “No, that would make me nervous, and I’m supposed to avoid things that make me nervous. I might throw something away that would turn out to be important. How can you really tell? But these blogs.” He turned back to the screen. “I find them relaxing. Like science fiction,” and it was true that now his shoulders, which had been creeping up toward his ears, began to drop back down.

  “So you know most of what they’re saying isn’t true.”

  “Well.” He tipped his head. “It’s like science fiction, it could be true.”

  “But these . . . ‘operations.’ Who do you think’s doing them?”

  “Oh, the Bilderbergers, or the Illuminati, or the NSA, or maybe there’s another agency that’s so secret we haven’t even heard of it yet. But sometimes some of these posts, people are just playing around. Like the one about the water supply, it was done by Daffy Duck.”

  “Of course. Daffy Duck is posting on blogs.” Not the sort of avatar that even her crazy uncle would take seriously, right?

  “Sometimes I’m just playing around too.” He went back through several screens to a post that said it had been submitted by Old Red. “‘You’ve put tape over the microphones and cameras of your computers,’” he read. “‘You’ve done this with your smart phones when you’re not using them too. But since so many people have taken these precautions, more inventive methods may be developed for watching and listening to you. For instance, have you been told to replace your dental fillings? You’ve probably been told to do this because of the poisonous effects of mercury, or just because the old fillings might fall out. But new filling material could contain tiny transmitters—’”

  “What! You wrote that?” She did need to stop this. “You just made that up!”

  “I only said it’s possible.” His gaze veered off to the side as if he might be embarrassed by the absurdity of that post. Or he was hurt by what she’d said? “I bet the government would like to do something like that. Don’t you think it’s possible? Then they could trace us everywhere we went. Unless you didn’t have any fillings in your teeth . . .”

  His voice trailed off uncertainly. What made this even more disturbing was that he was really smart. At least he had been. He’d been in college doing a double major in chemistry and physics when he’d become ill.

  He roused Lisa now, scratched her under the chin, and then went into full petting mode which was what he did whenever he didn’t want to talk anymore. Annie watched, fearing she’d overreacted and done more damage than these goofy blogs did. Sometimes when he withdrew like this, he wouldn’t open back up for days.

  Luckily, in only a few moments, his intense communion with the cat seemed to bring him back around. He still didn’t look at Annie, but he said, “I’m not ready to cut that guitar out yet. I have to study the wood some more, let the grain and the colors tell me the shape. And you know I don’t like to go out much, see people much, but blogging, it’s like I can stay right here and I have these friends.”

  This actually made sense. Sometimes he would take a month or more to study a board, sanding it to bring out the figure but not cutting into it. He made electric guitars, so they could be any shape. His skill was in making that shape enhance the natural patterns of the wood. And it was probably good that he felt he was making friends since she didn’t think he’d had any friends other than a few close friends of the family for as long as she’d known him. Possibly not since his first breakdown.

  Still, “Don’t you sometimes worry,” she said, “when you write something like that, something you think is only ‘possible,’ that someone will believe it’s true?”

  “Only if they’ve put that stuff in their water,” he said with an impish grin.

  So she smiled too. She didn’t have time to talk more about this now anyway. “Do you mind going to the store today?” she asked. “It’s such a nice day, I thought I’d take the bike out to Russ and Char’s, but I’ll be back for dinner, and I’d like to fix us something good.”

  “Sure. You know I can do that. I can go to the grocery store.”

  *

  Buzzard sat cramped in Fleep’s sexy but absurdly tiny Lexus IS C. He hadn’t had any sleep due to Fleep’s total change of heart in regard to sharing his cocaine. That part, of course, had been good. But then about five this morning Fleep had insisted they run out to the twenty-four hour Wal-Mart to buy a metal detector. After that he’d parked on this street where Annie’s uncle lived, and that was where they’d stayed, for no telling how many hours. It had to be past noon. Through all that time Fleep had kept Buzzard’s brain skimming right along, but his legs kept falling asleep.

  “I need another cigarette,” he said. Since Fleep, for some inexplicable reason, loved this miniature car so much he wouldn’t let anyone smoke in it, this meant Buzzard would get to walk around the block again, something he’d been doing about once an hour. He’d never thought of himself as someone who went for walks, but this car, in spite of its plush leather seats that tilted every which way if you could only figure out the controls, had convinced him it was good to take walks.

  But Fleep said, “Not again. You go for another trek around the block, someone’s going to call the cops. A guy your size does not blend.”

  “You think a ‘Matador Red Mica’ sports car blends? These people here drive Tauruses and Saturns, ones that are at least ten years old.”

  “Then why didn’t you suggest we use your car?”

  “You know it hasn’t run for months.”

  “Exactly,” said Fleep. “So accept this as one more consequence of your own lameness,” and he resumed staring at Annie’s uncle’s house as if something important was about to happen to it. But so far the house just kept standing there, with its peeling paint and foot-tall grass.

  And Buzzard was still trapped in this car. So it seemed he might again point out the stupidity of this plan. “Okay, let’s say Annie and her uncle do eventually leave their house—”

  “They’ll go out, they’ll do something. You just have to have patience.”

  “Okay, so when they leave, we jump out of this ‘Matador Red Mica’ car that does not blend dressed in coveralls that don’t fit.” This was one of Buzzard’s major complaints. The Wal-Mart coveralls Fleep had made him buy felt like a strait-jacket around his shoulders and kept riding up his crack. “And we’re going to be carrying this metal detector.” He gestured to the thing in the even more ridiculously undersized backseat. “Which looks like, guess what? A metal detector. And if we try to disguise it, it’s going to look like something worse, like maybe an assault rifle. So we carry the thing down the driveway to the backyard and scan every inch of that yard. Maybe we dig a few holes? Do we do that too? In broad daylight? You think that blends?”

  “I told you, people are home at night. And the dark makes them edgy. They see a light flash in someone’s yard, they think they’ve got to do something. This time of day, most people aren’t home, and the ones that are, they’re not worried. The coveralls, they’re just in case. Maybe someone looks out a window and sees us, but they don’t get all tweeked over that. They just think we’re fixing the sprinkler system.”

  Buzzard made such a violent gesture to show his frustration and disbelief that he smacked his elbow on the door, right on the nerve that vibrated all the way up his arm. He yelped and jumped, which made the coveralls ride up even more and totally smash his nuts. Why couldn’t Fleep have bought a Lexus LS with the money from that sweet job? Or how about a Mercedes S-Class, something that might give a guy a little comfort?

  “You want out of this deal?” asked Fleep.

  Now, this was a question that Buzzard hadn’t considered. Because he’d never exactly noticed when or how he’d gotten into it. He’d just mentioned Annie’s uncle, and Fleep had jumped all over the idea of stealing the guy’s gold. Buzzard had never met the uncle, but Annie had always been good to him. She’d said some really nice things about his sh
owier licks. And she seemed to like her uncle. Besides, if the uncle lost his gold, then she might have to get a job, the band might not be able to tour anymore, and then what would he do? Bass players weren’t hard to come by in this college town, and playing in a band had done wonders for his sex life. Without the coolness of playing in a band, what if he turned back into the fat, totally uncool loser he’d been in high school?

  “Look,” said Fleep. “I need ten million to make those hippies whole. But I bet we’ll find much more than that. We’ll have millions for ourselves too.”

  So Buzzard decided there was no point in forcing his sleep-deprived, cocaine-creamed brain to deal with the thorny ethics of the situation. Instead he said, “By the way, we’re not the only car on this street that doesn’t blend. In fact, if you’ll notice, all of the houses here have garages, and driveways too, where most people park their cars. But there’s not one, not two, but four cars parked out on the street, and the last time you let me out of this torture machine, I found they all had guys in them.”

  “Huh?” said Fleep.

  “It’s true. Like that white GMC cargo van, okay, it could live here. It looks boring enough. But there’s a perfectly empty driveway right next to it where it could be parked, and two guys are drinking coffee in there and looking as stupid as us. Same with the blue Ford pickup. It could belong here, but what’s with the guy in it? He had a fight with his wife? Doesn’t have enough gas to make it to the tavern? And the silver Porsche Cayenne, that thing’s extraterrestrial, beamed in from some other galaxy.”

  “Yeah, wicked car. I test drove one of those. Wanted this one more.”

  All Buzzard could think to say to that was, “You gotta be shittin’ me.”

  “Look, something’s happening,” said Fleep.

  Sure enough, finally the door of Annie’s uncle’s garage was rolling up. There were engine noises, and Annie came out, on a motorcycle. Not that you could say for sure it was her since she was in a full-face helmet and completely sheathed in black leather, but it looked more like a tall skinny girl than a tall skinny old man on the bike.

  The garage door rolled back down. “One more to go,” said Fleep.

  *

  Wes was painfully aware that the Porsche Cayenne he’d been assigned was about as undercover on this street as a flying saucer would be. But, he kept telling himself, it was probably the right gun for the job. More than likely he was going to find himself out in the country where he would need the fast cornering and possibly the all-wheel-drive. But when Annie came out of her garage on a KTM Adventure, he knew for all its power the Cayenne had been outgunned.

  At least she was easy to spot on the bike and not much faster than anyone else on the city streets. She pulled a few totally illegal passes, crossing double lines and sometimes slipping between cars as if there were additional lanes, but he was able to keep her in sight as long as they were in town. And also keep himself out of her sight, he hoped.

  But once she sped out into the country, he had to give up on the idea of staying far enough back that she might not notice him. She was hitting over a hundred miles an hour at times, and the road was hilly and curved. Plus there were roads that turned off, lots of them. Between the time he lost sight of her over some hill until he came over the hill himself, she could have easily disappeared down one of those side roads. He had to try to keep up. Which would have been no problem for the Porsche if only she’d been on four wheels instead of two. She was taking these corners at practically a forty-five degree angle. The Cayenne, for all its high-tech suspension, couldn’t lean like that.

  He was able to gain on her on the longer straights, but every corner she pulled ahead again. Also, when she came up on some doofus farmer who was obliviously driving his tractor right down the center of the road, she slipped around the guy. Wes had to flash his lights and honk until the lame fuck moved over. And once she left the farmland and climbed up into the forest, the road became even twistier, and there were trees as well as hills to block his view.

  She turned off onto a narrow forest road that was barely one lane wide. It was only luck that he saw her make that turn, and once he followed her into the tall trees, there was no way he could see her anymore.

  The road wound along a river, and soon the pavement ended. It went to gravel, and he did need the all-wheel-drive to stay between the ditches at this speed. Even with it, things were getting squirrely on the corners. He figured he was likely to end up wrapped around one of these firs.

  He had one advantage on the gravel though. The single track of Annie’s bike was visible, distinctively different from the tracks made by four tires. So even though there were often turnoffs here too, usually leading down to the river, he was fairly confident she hadn’t taken any of them. She was still in front of him on this road. And maybe she thought she’d lost him. So maybe there was still a chance she would lead him to the lab. He wasn’t about to give up until he did wrap this Cayenne around one of these trees.

  Then he came around a corner, and there she was, stopped, looking back at him. He smashed the brakes, felt the ABS kick in. What the hell was she thinking stopping in the middle of the road!

  She gave him the one finger salute, just like she’d done in the Caterpillar Lounge, spit a roost of gravel from her rear tire, and leaped up the bank into the woods.

  He came to a stop a few feet past where he’d last seen her. Then he sat there in the SUV, in case she stopped to look back. He didn’t need to get out. He could hear her roaring up the hill, and he knew what he would find. She’d taken a trail through the trees no wider than a footpath. She was on one of the few bikes that could handle the dirt as well as the pavement, but this was as far as he and the Porsche were going to go.

  Chapter 5

  Michael checked the weather online. It was supposed to be a nice warm June day. The sun was shining, and the thermometer that showed through the dining room window already read seventy-two. Still, he liked to wear a jacket when he went out. He would just wear his lightweight nylon windbreaker. He’d found he could wear it through most of the summer. He liked to wear his knit hat too, especially if he was going all the way to the supermarket. He just felt better with it on.

  He checked his wallet a couple of times to make sure he had his ID as well as the number of Annie’s cell. Annie had made it clear he should never go out without those things, and having them with him did make him feel more secure, like having a lifeline back to his home.

  He checked Lisa’s food dish and gave her fresh water. He found her asleep on his bed, her nose tucked under a paw. He watched her sleep until he could feel it was okay to leave her there. Then he checked the lock on the front door, went out the back door, and checked that lock once he was outside.

  It was maybe a mile to the supermarket, a nice walk on such a nice day, but even if it had been raining, he wouldn’t have driven his car. Annie kept insisting the old Volkswagen still ran fine, but that was because she didn’t understand, and he couldn’t explain to her, what was wrong with it.

  Walking was healthier anyway. And to get to the supermarket, he could stay on the quiet side streets he’d known all his life, streets where the houses had hardly changed in all that time. There was a man out with a weed-eater who nodded as Michael went by, but Michael avoided meeting the man’s eyes. He’d seen the man before but had never spoken to him, and if he did happen to catch the man’s eye, the man might say something. Then he would expect Michael to say something.

  In some ways it was easier to walk when the weather was colder and no one but himself was outside.

  The strip mall that held the supermarket was more difficult than the streets, of course. It hadn’t been there when he was a kid, and even now that it had been here thirty years or more, sometimes a store would close or another would put up its sign. He came at it from a quiet side street, but then suddenly he was in the big parking lot surrounded by all those stores that sometimes changed. And cars could appear heading right at him if he was
looking down at his feet, maybe thinking about something he’d read, like Operation Reduced Expectations. He’d noticed toothpaste tubes were getting smaller too, much smaller than the boxes they came in.

  To avoid having to dodge cars any more than necessary, it was best to walk along the edge of the parking lot, by the newspaper recycling bin and a row of dumpsters. That way he could reach the mall’s sidewalk without crossing the busy part of the lot. Once on the sidewalk he checked Annie’s list one more time to remind himself that she wanted two chicken breasts and some asparagus. Not the frozen kind. She’d made it clear he should be able to find good fresh asparagus this time of year.

  But she’d given him more money than he would need for those few things. She’d suggested he might enjoy stopping at the used book store. And since once he bought the food, he would need to take it straight home to the refrigerator, he stopped at the bookstore first.

  He pushed open its door, making the little bell on the door ring, and immediately he could feel the tension that inevitably grew on his way here quietly ease away. This was one of the few places outside his own home where he felt truly comfortable, maybe because of the dusty smells, the old paper smells. He liked old paper smells. He knew Annie didn’t approve of the amount of mail he’d accumulated, and it wasn’t that he was deliberately saving mail because of its smell—no, as he’d tried to explain to her, all that mail just seemed too complex, an overwhelming cascade of choices coming at him almost every day—but wouldn’t it be nice if the piles of mail took on an old paper smell.

  He knew the proprietor of the bookstore, of course, and they sometimes exchanged words, but the proprietor was a quiet middle-aged man who usually sat at his desk in the back with a book of his own. He looked up at the bell and nodded when Michael came in, but then he went right back to his reading, and this was probably another reason Michael felt comfortable here. In some stores the clerks insisted on helping you find things, but what Michael liked to do in this store was just to wander up and down the aisles surrounded by those walls of dusty books.